Police chase shuts down France’s Lyon airport runway

The car hurtled across the restricted runway area with police cars and a helicopter in pursuit following a chase along a nearby motorway.

In this picture taken with a mobile phone through the window of a plane shows a French gendarmes vehicle speeds on the tarmac of Lyon's Saint-Exupery airport on September 10, 2018 as a man was arrested by the police after having managed to get in the runways with his car without doing any injury. (AFP)

France’s Lyon airport temporarily closed its runway on Monday while police chased an intruder who had rammed a car through a terminal building and sped across the tarmac before being detained, police and judicial sources said.

The car hurtled across the restricted runway area with police cars and a helicopter in pursuit following a chase along a nearby motorway, a police source said.

The driver abandoned his car and tried to flee on foot but was surrounded by officers and arrested, an official at the local public prosecutor’s office said.

Several flights had to be diverted, according to the flight-tracking application Flightradar24.